Indonesia News & Research | LGBTQ+

HIV cases on the rise as Indonesia cracks down on LGBTQ community

A report by Human Rights Watch has indicated that HIV prevalence among men who have sex with men (MSM) has increased five-fold since a decade ago, now accounting for a third of the new cases reported annually, a

Growing media and governmental discourse has framed LGBTQ people as threats to public security, while police raids, fundamentalist vigilantism, and discriminatory prosecutions have targeted clinics providing sexual health education and services.

Clinics have begun limiting public outreach and condoms themselves have begun to be entered into evidence in criminal cases, further stifling distribution of preventive resources.

Outlas Outreach

The Ongoing Insecurity of LGBT Ghanaians

A relatively stable constitutional democracy, Ghana has seen the beginnings of official outreach to its LGBT citizens in recent years as it has signed on to pro-LGBT international accords and treaties, but new research from Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals ongoing persecution and gender-based vulnerabilities. Though rarely enforced, a law criminalizing same-sex relations that emerged from the country’s colonial legacy has led to the political and corporal endangerment of LGBT Ghanaians, exposing them to intimidation, violence, fears of public exposure, and little to no recourse to law enforcement protection. Lesbians, bisexual women, and trans men have faced especially high levels of violence and labor precarity, and anti–domestic violence laws have done little to protect them given the lack of trust in the legal system. In response, HRW conducted interviews with LGBT Ghanaians to track insecurity across a range of social, legal, and economic domains and issued a set of recommendations to improve protections for the community.